Synopsis
A portrait of the filmmaker Patricio Guzmán. The documentary offers a journey through his filmmaking, which is marked by the recent history of his country, Chile. From The Battle of Chile, a monument of direct cinema retracing the final months of Salvador Allende, Chile’s president from 1970 to 1973, and president of Chile’s Popular Unity Party – to The Pearl Button, a work-in-progress filmed here in its early stages, Guzmán reveals both himself and his vision of filmmaking.
A word from Tënk
There’s something grand and deeply moving about Patricio Guzmán’s life and work, from The Battle of Chile (1975-1979) to his later films, including Nostalgia for the Light (2010), found in his capacity to reveal the connections between Chile’s recent history and its past, between the earth of the Atacama Desert through which women obstinately sift in search of traces and the vast sky that astronomers observe from the same desert. This all required a filmmaker to highlight these connections and make the public sensitive to them. And it also needed a filmmaker to spark and record these poignant words from Guzmán as he shows himself to be so aware of the utility and power of film, as well as of the uncertainties and fragilities that haunt him as a filmmaker.
This is what Boris Nicot has managed to capture so well in this film. “It’s as though each of us kept a secret, and the moment of the interview serves to reveal it. For me, an interview is a revelation.“
Fabien David
Programmer at Cinéma Le Bourguet in Forcalquier
